Rose Daughter

Rating:
Summary: My Favorate Author
Review: Robin McKinley was never my favorite author, but I rather enjoyed her book Beauty. So, after I heard about Rose Daughter, I gave it a try. And I WAS dissapointed.
The story is about an unrealistic girl and her two rich sisters, (also unrealistic in character and personality...for goodness sake, their names are Lionheart and Jeweltoungue!)
There family becomes suddenly poor due to the downfall of their father who has been suffering since the death of their mother (typical). They move to a small cottage in the middle-of-no-where, where they (oh my gosh!) SOMEHOW manage to make a living and totally adjust to their new surroundings!
The main character Beauty, was not at all realistic. After growing up as a rich spoiled brat, how in the world could she know how to run a country cottage? without riches? Sure, Mckinely makes up some excuse about her "learning" in the knick of time how to re-adjust her entire life style. But, seriously, a more believeable story would be they struggled for a bit.
Then, Beauty is sent away to live with the enchanted Beast in the middle of the forest and comes to love and appreciete the "gentle giant."
It ends weakly, with Beauty marrying the beast. The catch is, the Beast remains in his creature form, never changes back to human. The story would have turned out better if the ending hadn't been so rushed and the beast became human.
Seriously, beast marrying pretty girl?
I like details in books. But it seemed this book lost you in all of the details. Honestly, there can be such a thing. You'd read an entire chapter that was just describing one thing, and I kept thinking, "Ok, i get the picutre, move on!"

Main point:
Unrealistic character fails unrealistically in love with a hideious monster
OMG, freak out!

Rating:
Summary: Really good!
Review: I wanted to read this book since it was by McKinley and I had read BEAUTY (which I loved and love to reread over and over). I had expected this book to be just as good as BEAUTY, if not better since it was longer and looked more interesting. I think it started out pretty well...but then just got worse and worse. I found parts of the book confusing...I wasn't able to picture what was going on as I am usually able to do while reading McKinley's books. I absolutely hated the ending...I know Beauty is supposed to love the Beast for who he is...but I can't even imagine a human girl marrying a huge beast. The fairy-tale ending with the beast changing into a human is much better.